Growth Strategy

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That ideas can go viral is now a given in corporate marketing. But new research suggests the term “viral” marketing does not describe well what happens in the market.

Sharad Goel, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, and fellow researchers wanted to see whether messages spread via social networks virally, “like the common cold, some sort of biological contagion. One person gets infected and their friend gets infected and a friend of their friend gets infected.”
That wasn’t what Goel found.

It’s difficult to start a venture that gains traction with paying customers, but it’s even harder to grow beyond certain levels of sales. The original business model must deal with new products or markets. Early leadership behaviors are often no longer viable. Moreover, different customers come with different transaction costs for the seller. This article discusses the importance of customer selection and how intelligent opportunity management can help companies scale their selling initiatives.

Today, the task of the global strategist involves not only identifying where to leverage a company’s strength but also how to enhance and renew its capabilities. The experience of many global companies suggests that expensive mistakes are often made when companies don’t ask key questions before making internationalization decisions. By better understanding their own competitive advantages and how they might fit into or complement a new market, companies can improve their chances of success.

Significant growth opportunities lie in second- and third-tier cities and rural areas. But although consumers there are some disposable income, they have limited resources. That’s forcing multinationals to rethink how they design products and services to reach them.

Companies are increasingly turning toward business model innovation as an alternative or complement to product or process innovation. Changes to business model design can be subtle; even when they might not have the potential to disrupt an industry, they can still yield important benefits to the innovator. The article offers a number of examples of business model innovation and poses six questions for executives to consider when thinking about business model innovation.

Companies traditionally pursue growth by investing heavily in product development so they can produce new and better offerings; by developing consumer insights so they can satisfy customers’ needs; or by making acquisitions and expanding into new markets. This article identifies a fourth method: “business model experimentation,” or using thought experiments to quickly and inexpensively examine new business model possibilities.

In these days of uncertain markets – and an uncertain economy – risk can seem almost omnipresent. But how do you manage risk prudently – yet still grow your company? Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Kaplan began exploring risk management in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, after he saw venerable firms such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collapse – despite having risk management functions. Here are a few of his insights on the topic of risk management.

In recent years, researchers have created a number of metrics to explain the connections between customer behavior and growth. But under the harsh reality of the marketplace, these efforts have generated more smoke than heat. Nevertheless, managers continue to search for insight into how customers feel – and how they will behave.

Not all growth is good. An analysis of Fortune Global 500 companies shows that the businesses that grew within the limits of their growth corridors performed far better than others -- even those that grew faster.